Tell Me What You Want

Customer service and my quest to save spoons

I will preface this post by saying that I’ve been stymied as to what to put on blast as of late because the only thing on my mind is the presidential election. I don’t wish to write about it at the moment as it feels like screaming into the abyss and I cannot waste the energy. I saw Hamilton a few times, I get that America is a relatively young country in the scheme of things.  But are we so green, so angry, so short sighted that we’re willing to take autocratic lunacy out for a spin? Please tell me we’re not.

All I know is that I dropped my Harris/Walz vote in the mailbox yesterday and I have no interest in being an aging disabled woman in a Trump/Vance hellscape. Perhaps I’ve been mainlining too much Rachel Maddow, but I have some pivotal plans (brain surgery, retirement, perhaps a pixie haircut) that require some stability in the societal landscape and I can’t move on without the assurance that we the people can land on the side of democratic reason. RANT OVER.

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That said, the only other breezy topic I could muster under the circumstances to discuss was CONFLICT RESOLUTION. Enjoy!

I have a coworker at my sky office who has the reputation of being a battle axe in regards to customer service situations. She is infamous for cutting off any passenger who comes to her with a blistering list of complaints and asking one simple question.

“What is it that you want that you’re not getting?”

A bit terse, I suppose. But I’m quite drawn to the shortest line to the brass tacks of it all. As someone who has spent endless hours nodding, smiling, and apologizing for legitimate major grievances and illogical Ambien induced fever dreams and everything in between, I am now favoring any communication tool where we can skip the long ass lead-up to get to the meaty center of your beef with me/my coworker/my employer/the weather/the last time you flew another airline and something terrible happened and you will not be fooled again.

In most situations that I’ve encountered, the person in question just wants to be heard. They want to tell their story to someone with a nametag and have them acknowledge that whatever happened to them was not as it should have been and they deserve better. Customer service 101 dictates that you do all that is within your power to rectify the problem while validating their ruffled feathers. If there is zero that can be done, explain why and be apologetic about it. 

However, if there is a goal, let’s move it to the top of the ticket. You want a different seat? Maybe I have one. You need to take a pill? Here, have some water. You are sick of sitting in this seat where we have been waiting for the storm to break for three plus hours now and your friend in Phoenix who is picking you up can’t drive in the dark and you are hungry and this is goddamn ridiculous. Wow, sounds like you might want to go home and fix a highball and try again tomorrow. Let me get your bag out of the overhead bin so you can be on your way. It’s a bit awkward when everyone around you claps when you leave, but tomorrow will be better. BUH BYE GLADYS. Travel often can break your spirit, honey. Been there.

A few weeks ago I was on the phone with my mother telling her briefly about a short trip to New York to see Jon Batiste that I recounted here recently. She launched into a weird passive aggressive diatribe about how her friends think I am not helpful enough to her, but she understands that I am busy. How she knows she must be boring to be around because she can’t go to “rock concerts”. How other people’s children were indispensable to them during the pandemic, but it didn’t occur to me at the time because I was too busy quarantining with my housemates.

I felt a familiar feeling in my feet and legs, the same feeling I get when my medicine stops working, when I forget to eat, when I walk too much in a day. My ankles tightening up, my right toes going numb, my left foot contracting into a useless stump.

Recognizing that I did not have the time or energy to decipher all of her manipulative code, I asked her,

“What is it that you want that you’re not getting?”

“I want you to come visit”. 

Was that so hard? 

And yes, I know that there is so much more going on here…I’m supposed to want to visit, I should have picked up on that during the last handful of vague suggestions, I should not have let it fester so long as to push the whole thing to the point of being UNPLEASANT. But in all honesty, I only have so many spoons to manage and I have learned to be mindful and err on the side of doing less. 

(“Spoon Theory” is a metaphor used to describe the finite amount of energy available to those of us with disabilities and/or chronic illness/pain. It illustrates how many simple tasks take away from our energy supply and when we’re out of spoons, we’re done. There is no “pushing through” or “toughing it out”.  Here is a visual from Carenity with some examples)

Listening to manipulative whinging takes an Oneida outlet store inventory of spoons, for the record.

Because the internet can be a magical place on occasion, I stumbled upon a post yesterday from a man that said he had all but stopped arguing with his wife since they made a pact that if either of them begins to vent, the other person should counter with a simple question.

“Do you want comfort or do you want solutions?”

I LIKE THIS VERY MUCH. 

Sometimes you just want the recipient of your rant to simply listen and tell you at the end that whatever happened sounds like a shit sandwich and that other bitch was SO WRONG and of course we hate her and let’s go get some ice cream. I find caramel and sea salt to be a healing combination. Or maybe we go for a walk or watch a movie and I give you an extra hug or a hand squeeze because your day sucked ass. 

And sometimes you really truly want concrete advice. I have had people tell me things that seemed so obvious but I was too close to recognize an easy answer. People assume I have things all figured out as I don’t complain a great deal but I always appreciate input from those with my best interests at heart. I also recognize that as a former fixer that I tend to foam at the mouth with suggestions and ideas because that’s the way I show I care and perhaps I should take a beat and STFU and just listen. 

Either way, I have to be mindful of the spoons. I have no doubt that there will be many more challenging days ahead and I often write to clarify and display the tools I have to use to protect my energy. I encourage your thoughts in the comments, my tool box has plenty of room for ideas. I’ll read them today on the plane ride to see my mother.

And please please please please please VOTE. Thank you.